Back to work


Boxing Day isn’t a holiday in Singapore, so I went to the office today after three days off. Most people had taken off the four days between Christmas and New Year (giving themselves 10 uninterrupted days of leisure, less however much time they spent panic shopping before the 25th) so my floor was deserted. No better environment to chug through a series of performance reviews while cranking the music from Gremlins.

I find that just like interviews, the law of diminishing returns kicks in pretty fast when you’re writing reviews. I can usually knock out a review in about 20 minutes, but then I need at least that much time to recover before going again. I can try to mitigate that inefficiency by going and taking to people while I’m recovering, but with the paucity of people in the office today, that didn’t help so much.

When I’d done all I could, I left and met my wife at the library, and we sauntered over to the National Gallery, where there’s an exhibition of Impressionists. She’d been with Destroyer while La Serpiente was still in school, so she knew all the pictures that appeal to a two year old (and by extension, me). There were some famous Monets and also work by Luna,. a Filipino artist-turned-diplomat from the end of the nineteenth century. After we’d looked at snowy landscapes and pretty pictures (and a large painting of a lion savaging a horse as they both fall into a ravine) we went down to eat cake, then rushed home for the girls.

This evening they continued their attempts to not ever go to sleep. First Destroyer lay on the floor of the bathroom and refused to get in her bath, then when she’d had her bath and was happy, La Serpiente threw herself around the bed until she collided with her mother’s knee and then began to cry. When that was settled to her satisfaction, Destroyer unilaterally decided to go and stare at her mother on the toilet. That meant (despite warnings) she missed having books read to her, so then she screamed blue murder until La Serpiente complained, so then I relented and read them one more book, and then she wanted a different blanket to the one she got for Christmas, and then both girls needed to be cuddled except La Serpiente wanted me to give her her bottle of water, and … And then by 8:45 they were both asleep, and I could go watch Die Hard and try out my new foam roller. A day well spent.


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